I have gone through two sets of ZAGG smartbuds and am now trying out a pair of Skullcandy’s 50/50 earbuds. I’ve used them both enough to give a fair review of both. First let me say that I do not listen to music, but I am a hardcore users of these earbuds. I wear them everyday. If you’re interested, I am a hardcore listener of podcasts and audio books. I listen at the gym, in the car, at the grocery store, while I mow the lawn… pretty much anytime I’m by myself with nothing to do.

ZAGG smartbuds (3.5/5)

Let’s start with the ZAGG smartbuds. I originally bought these because the Apple earbuds that came with my iPhone began to breakdown from over use. At the time these things were 75$, but I was able to get a pretty good coupon… back when ZAGG use to give their stuff away to gain momentum. The second pair I bought second hand from a co-worker who didn’t really like them (he’s stockier than I am and said that the cordage didn’t really work for him). There are many things I loved about these earbuds and many things I didn’t…

Pro’s

1. They can be worn in a way that keeps the buds around your neck, even when not in use. This was probably the most convenient thing about these earbuds and I wore mine everyday like this. It makes it convenient for taking calls, as well as just popping in your earbuds to listen to the No Agenda Podcast (the best podcast in the universe).
2. They are very comfortable, the earbuds actually come with 4 different sets of earbud adapters, 2 sizes of the thin silicone earbuds and 2 sets of the thicker foam earbuds. I used the smallest size foam and thought that they fit the best and gave the best noise cancellation affect, great for when I was listening to Beyond the Box Podcast with Steve Sensenig and Raborn Johnson.
3. They generally sound great, bare in mind, I’m listening to mostly podcasts and the audio quality doesn’t need to be amazing for me to get what I need, but I’ve never had any major problems with the sound.

Con’s

1. The regular iPhone headphones have push button volume up/down controls and the hang-up/answer button. The ZAGG smartbuds has the hang-up/answer button, but the volume control is actually separate from the the iPhone controls, it’s a slide. It kind of gives you a little more control over the volume, since you can control the headphone volume from your iPhone and then also from your headphones. However, I found this to be a nuisance more than anything. I always kept my iPhone volume up to 100% and controlled the actual headphone volume using the slider. However, it seemed like at some points in the “slide” the volume went from just too low to just too high. I think it would have been much more sensible to just use the volume up/down controls like the Apple earbuds.
2. My first pair started to get some static, it seemed like the 3.5mm connector  started to wear down so whenever it moved in my pocket I’d hear some crackling noises.
3. I really liked that I could keep the earbud around my neck… but occasionally I’d be reminded that at any time some ninja could sneak up behind me while I’m listening to This Week in Tech and strangle me to death with my own earbuds.
4. They claim that they have a noise cancelling mic. I’m not sure how this works or if it even worked. I didn’t really detect any real noise cancelling effect apart from the foam earbuds. I could be wrong, but I did occasionally have to set the volume to the highest setting. I would think with “noise cancellation” it would have cancelled the noise around me better. This is true for both pairs I owned.
5. It’s actually kind of hard to store these earbuds. The cordage is much longer than a typical set, and there are many “hard” places that seem to get into the way of how I normally wrap a set of earphones.

Skullcandy 50/50 Earbuds (4/5)

After I accidentally broke my second pair of ZAGG smart buds (my first pair broke on their own somehow). I needed to get a new set of earbuds. It’s hard to come by a good ZAGG coupon these days, so I had to look elsewhere for my podcast listening needs. After a few search and reading some reviews on Amazon I decided to try out the Skullcandy 50/50 earbuds.

Pro’s

1. These actually have the Apple standard volume up/down control buttons. This is so much better than a slider to control the volume, I no longer have to fight for the “perfect” volume when I listen to the Freakonomics Podcast.
2. I broke my last set of smartbud because of the “around the neck” feature, I don’t have to worry about that with these, if I snag the cord on something they’ll just pop out of my ears. But if I’m not wearing them, they’ll be put in my pocket anyway. So hopefully these will last me longer than the smartbuds did.
3. Like the smartbuds, the sounds quality is great. I haven’t noticed any problems, no snapping, or crackling. Though I haven’t had these as long as my first part of the smartbuds.
4. It is much easier to wrap up these headphones in and store them, though this is only against the ZAGG smartbuds, I’m sure any traditional headphones would be just as easy as these are. It’s still a PRO because I no longer have to deal with that hassle.

Con’s

1. I don’t know why they are made this way, but their silicone earbud adapters are horrible (at least for me). They sound fine, but the problem is they have little embossed “skulls” on them, which basically makes the inside of my ear itch like crazy. It’s like having a small grain of sand in your ear. Luckily, I had all my earbud adapters from my ZAGG collection. The foam ones didn’t really work (they didn’t fit right on the earphones), but the ZAGG silicone adapters worked great, and they’re actually very comfortable. I know this is turning into a pro, but it’s a con… because I think you’ll have to buy a third-party set of silicone earbud adapaters to get a comfortable feel. Skullcandy really needs to change this (seriously, who the heck is going to see the “skull” in your ears anyway). Though I never saw this complaint in the reviews I’ve read, it might just be me.
2. These don’t have the same feature that lets you keep the earbuds around your neck. It’s not a deal-breaker, but I really did like that about the smartbuds. Though I don’t really need to worry about ninjas as much.
3. These earbuds have a chrome piece on the earbuds that actually get pretty cold and is kind of shocking when you put it in your ear. It doesn’t last long, but I don’t enjoy it very much.

So there you have it, I was able to get the Skullcandy 50/50 earbuds a bit cheaper on Amazon than the ZAGG smartbuds. Neither are perfect, but I guess if you don’t want to buy those 200$ earbuds, you’ll have to compromise in one way or another. I think I’m really going to like the Skullcandy 50/50 earbuds though, the biggest complaint I have against them is their embossed silicone earbud adapters. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably give them 5 (out of five).

Just got back from the theatre, where Kati and I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Kati had read the three book series and really wanted to see this movie. She commented that this is one the best adaptation of a movie based on a book she’s ever seen. I have to say, this is probably the best movie I’ve seen this year, probably in a long time. The acting was amazing and the plot was extremely interesting.

The story is about a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (played by Daniel Craig), who is hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate the death of his daughter from 35 years ago. As he is figuring out what happens, he gets an assistant, Lizbeth Salander (played by Rooney Mara), the girl with the dragon tattoo. Lizbeth, is basically an hacker/investigator for a company. She is 23 years old but is a ward of the state because she was ruled incompetent/insane as a child. She is extremely intelligent but has had a very rough life. This movie reveals the dark side of Sweden as Lizbeth and Mikael’s fates intersect and they journey together in solving Vanger’s daughter’s death.

I wholeheartedly give this movie 5 out of 5 Circus Peanuts, with two caveats.

1) The “hacking” is not very realistic, this is typical of all movies though.
2) This movie is VERY R-rated. Rooney Mara has a few nude/sex scenes in the movie. There are also extremely graphic (and disturbing) rape/revenge scenes.

Regardless, this movie has definitely peaked my interested to the next two books in the series. I believe I’ll start reading them soon.

I have a back-log of posts that I’ve been meaning to write and this is one of them… A few months ago I found myself in the position of needing to purchase and SSL certificate. This is nothing new to me, I’ve purchased many for many people, but never any for myself. I usually use Enom (one of the companies I consult for has a reseller account) or I use GoDaddy. GoDaddy usually has some pretty low prices but their user interface is horrible. Seriously, the first time I used GoDaddy to by and SSL cert took me like an hour to figure out what I was suppose to do.

I also didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg for a basic cert. If I could get it cheaper than what GoDaddy sells them for I was going to go for it. I did a basic Google search and happened upon a site called “CheapSSLs.com“. CheapSSLs.com had a Commodo PositiveSSL cert for 8.95$/year…. 8.00$/yr for a 3 year cert! The only problem is I did not have a clue if CheapSSLs.com was a reputable company. I asked and searching around for people with negative experience. The only bad press I saw was some guy who clearly had no idea what happens when you order an SSL cert, and even his experiences ended on a high note with compliments to their customer service.

Well, I figured, for 36$ and 3 years of SSL protection, it was worth a shot. So, I held onto my hat and slapped down the cash plastic. It was super simple to purchase and much easier to setup than my experiences with GoDaddy’s UI. I was up in running in no time.

I was a little leery at first of the site named “CheapSSLs.com” but my experiences have definitely swayed me. I will be using them for all future SSL purchases. Thanks guys for the great prices and great experience.

P.S. I am not affiliated with CheapSSLs.com in anyway, although if they had an affiliate program, I’d probably sign up.

After the last ballet performance of the season by the Atlanta Ballet, Kati and I headed over to Mary Mac’s Tea Room to try out the food. We have a list of Atlanta restaurants to try out and this was second on the list.

We ordered some Fried Green Tomatoes as an appetizers. They were pretty good, not as good as I remember them being at the Blue Willow.

Because this was our first time at Mary Mac’s, they gave us some complimentary “Pot Likker”. Pot Likker, also known as Collard Liquor, is the liquid that is left behind after boiling collard greens. It’s basically soup, it was pretty tasty with corn bread crumbled in it.

Speaking of cornbread, they gave us an assortment of breads to eat with our dinner — cornbread, yeast rolls, and cinnamon rolls. They were pretty amazing tasting. I don’t think I got a picture of them though… oops.

For dinner Kati ordered the Country Fried Steak and Gravy… it was pretty good, but she said she thinks her mom’s version is better. She also ordered butter beans and cornbread dressing on the side. The dressing was absolutely amazing!

I ordered the Roast Turkey with cornbread dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce. For my sides I ordered the macaroni and cheese and potato cakes. I was a little disappointed because I only got two small potato cakes, I think four would have been the appropriate number. The mac and cheese was probably the best I have ever put in my mouth. The entree itself was also extremely delicious.

Although there wasn’t much room in my stomach, I had to order something for desert. I decided to try out the strawberry shortcake… and I accidentally ate half of it before realizing that I didn’t take a picture, so here it is half eaten :). The shortcake made the desert! It was perfectly sweet and had a nice buttery, crunchy crust.

Mary Mac’s is definitely on the “will visit again” list. The food there was just astounding and there is so much more on the menu that looked appealing. If you are ever in downtown Atlanta, I would definitely recommend this restaurant.

A couple weeks ago I heard about this app called Sleep Cycle. Sleep Cycle is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and tries to wake you when you are in the lightest point in your sleep cycle. The app only costs .99$. It was actually the first app I have ever purchased. I purchased Sleep Cycle for two reasons. First, I definitely believe in the power of waking up at the right time. Two, I thought this was a pretty innovative app and was worth a try for a buck.

If you know anything about sleep, than you know we sleep in cycles. We move in and out of a dream states and a deep sleeps. An average cycles is about 90 minutes long. The theory goes that if you wake up during your deep sleep, you do not feel as rested. If you wake up when you are in the lightest point of your sleep cycle, you will be able to wake up and get out of bed much easier. I find this to be somewhat true, depending on how much sleep I actually get. Usually I sleep about 6-7 hours each night… I usually go to bed late and get up early.

One thing that I really like about this app is that it keeps a historical record of your sleep cycles for each night. The first thing I do in the morning is look at my previous night’s sleep. Check out my graphs for this past work week:

If you look at Thursday, you will see some weird spikes around 2:30AM and 5:00AM. Those were when Gus woke me up to drink some water and then woke me up to go outside (because he drank too much water, I assume).

As much as I love this app, I think there are two major flaws.

1. The app is a basic alarm clock, which is great. The way it works is, if you need to be up by 6:30, then you set the Sleep Cycle alarm to wake you up by 6:30. It monitors your sleep cycle and when it feels you are at the most “awake” point in your cycle, it will wake you up. However, if you are in a deep sleep it will wait until 6:30 to wake you up. This is fine, the problem is that you only have a 30 minute window. So it will wake you up anywhere between 6:00 and 6:30. The problem is that the average sleep cycle is 90 minutes. There have been times when my cycle dropped to deep sleep right before the 6:00 mark and it woke me up at 6:30 while I was still deep asleep.I think it would make more sense to make the “alarm” window 45 minutes or 90 minutes… or customizable.

2. I only use this app Monday through Friday because I generally do not need to be up at a certain time on the weekends. However, I would still really like to know what my sleep cycle was like on the weekends. It would be great if I could just set it to track my sleep, then whenever I woke up and I could see what happened through the night. Currently the only way to accomplish this is to set an alarm for later than you would normally wake up. Here is an example of what the graph looks like when I woke up on my own:

I guess those two are not really major flaws… they are more like, major feature requests. Some other feature ideas would be:

• Ability to customize the alarm sound from the iPhone’s music collection.
• Enable the recording device to record whenever it detected noise. So when I am in my dream sleep, I can click to see what I may have said through the night.
• It currently allows you to share your stats by email and Facebook, should add an option for Twitter.

Well, that is about it, overall I really like this app and have already incorporated it into my daily routine. I do not think it will help me get more sleep, but hopefully it will continue to help me wake up easier.